


Mantids are People Too

by St_Salieri



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: American Politics, Crack, Gen, Not comics compliant, Post-Series, Ted Cruz is the Zodiac Killer, and by Zodiac Killer I mean something right up Buffy's alley
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-24
Updated: 2016-09-24
Packaged: 2018-08-16 22:54:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8120752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/St_Salieri/pseuds/St_Salieri
Summary: The 2016 US presidential election race is threatening to turn your humble author (and the Scoobies) into a gibbering wreck.  This is the result, and it has no redeeming value whatsoever.





	

Buffy backed silently out of the bedroom and let the door close softly behind her. As soon as it clicked shut, she whirled around and aimed her best glare at Andrew. He was already in pre-cringing mode. Wise man.

"What did you do to Willow?" she hissed, knowing she didn't really need to keep her voice down.  The way that Willow was currently drooling all over Buffy's best pillow, she wouldn't hear anything softer than a minor nuclear explosion taking place right outside the window.  Andrew cringed even further, pretzeling himself sideways in his best attempt at appeasement.

"She told me to do it!" he whined.  "I swear!  Do you think I'd lie to you about this?"

Buffy tried to count ten and stopped at four when she realized the numbers were doing nothing.

"Do I think you'd lie to me?" she asked pleasantly. "Let's see...how long have I known you?"  And wow, was Andrew literally melting into the floor?  She wouldn't put it past him, if he thought it might allow him an easy escape.

Dawn leaned out of the nearest room and gave the tableau a once-over, raising her eyebrows.

"Anyone want to tell me why our hallway has suddenly gone to DEFCON five?" she asked.

"One," Andrew whimpered. Dawn's eyebrow went up again - just the left one this time, and clearly Andrew had some kind of instinct that made him revert to Annoying Nerd Mode in the face of imminent danger.  Maybe it was his superpower.  "DEFCON one is the highest level of alert," he explained.  "Which is a common mistake to make, but if you'd bothered to watch _War Games_ with me the other night, then you'd...okay, shutting up now."

"I caught him casting a spell in the living room, and now Willow is sleeping the sleep of the comatose and I can't wake her up," Buffy said, eager to head another discussion of Broderick's oeuvre off at the pass.

"Ohhh," Dawn said knowingly, looking at Andrew with a slightly more forgiving expression.  "What was it...MSNBC?"

"CNN," Andrew said.  "Lewandowski was on, and..."

"Say no more," Dawn said briskly.  "It was entirely justified in this case."

Buffy cleared her throat loudly when Andrew started looking a little less uncomfortable.  "Oh, no," she said.  "Say plenty more.  What exactly is going on here?"

Dawn exchanged a glance with Andrew, who seemed more than eager for someone else to take over the explaining.  "Operation Hypnos," she told Buffy.  "You know how this election has been stressing Willow out, right?"

"I think the entire world plus several other dimensions knows," Buffy muttered.  Which, okay, wasn't entirely fair.  Willow had more than kept up with all of her responsibilities, working with Giles to train some of the newest Slayers in sensing magical auras.  But something in her seemed to have snapped around mid-July, and more than once Buffy had found her bleary-eyed at six am after spending all night arguing online because Someone was Wrong on the Internet about politics.  Xander had been the latest to attempt the, "Hey, preaching to choir here, Wills, so maybe a little less with the preaching?" talk.  And really, it was hard to judge.  Buffy knew she herself had the luxury of temporarily ignoring reality entirely when she was in slay-mode.  Stabbing things with pointy objects was an incredible stress relief, and it was a shame that Willow couldn't appreciate how a little violence was good for the soul.

Or a lot of violence.

"She told us she was having trouble relaxing," Andrew chimed in.  "Like, she couldn't get her brain to turn off.  She gave us the spell to use on her when she got too...you know."  He gave Buffy a shrewd look.  "Have you seen what happens to that vein in her forehead when Trump is on TV?"

Buffy shuddered, because yes, she did know, and the vein was only the beginning.

"Only with her permission," Dawn clarified.  "She wrote the framework of the spell herself, although she said we might have to modify it for strength."

"Which I got, by the way!" Andrew interjected.  "CNN was on, and she looked like she was going to have a stroke.  I asked her if she wanted me to do the spell, and she said yes!"

Dawn shrugged.  "I mean, it's a pretty simple piece of magic - mostly in the herbs and stuff.  It's just supposed to take the edge off for a few hours."

Buffy sighed heavily and gave the two morons in front of her - because, really - a pointed glance and opened the bedroom door behind her.  Dawn and Andrew peeked over her shoulder, wincing at the volume of snores coming from the bed.  The pillow was apparently a lost cause entirely.

"Is that what taking the edge off looks like?"

Dawn exchanged a slightly sheepish look with Andrew.  "I guess we may have mixed the herbs a little stronger than we'd thought," she said.  "On the bright side...hey, she's finally getting some real sleep!"

"Yeah, on my bed," Buffy said.  "You couldn't have done the spell at her place?"

"Huh," was Andrew's brilliant response.  Buffy rolled her eyes.

"Giles is bringing some of the girls over," she said.  "I couldn't just leave her on the couch.  Who knows how long she'll be out?"  When Dawn just winced and studied the carpet intensely, Buffy cleared her throat.  "That wasn't a rhetorical question, by the way."

"The different variables involved are pretty complex," Andrew said.  "It's hard to predict on a normal human, but on someone of Willow's magical capabilities?  I mean, I had to triple the amount of Frophla slime just to make sure that she'd..."

"Wait," Dawn said.  "Tripled?  Was that before or after I already doubled it?"  Andrew's jaw fell open, and he and Dawn stared dumbly at each other.

At some point, Buffy thought idly, she would track down and disembowel the person who coined the phrase _Silence is Golden_.  In her experience, silence was just the temporary calm that preceded the inevitable chaos.

"So, we're talking hours?" she pressed when it seemed no answer was forthcoming.  "Days?"

"I'm not saying _weeks_ is entirely out of the realm of..." Andrew began, trailing off as Buffy marched past him and stomped down the stairs into the TV room.

"That's it," she declared to the talking heads on CNN and the universe in general.  "I can't take this any more.  November isn't getting any closer.  Every day that passes just makes it even further away.  How is that even possible?  Is this one of those time loop things?"  She pointed her finger at Andrew and Dawn, who had followed her mutely into the living room, and at Xander, who had apparently wandered in from the kitchen to see what all the noise was about.  Great, everyone was there to see her crack up.  "You'd tell me if it was a time loop, right?"

"That would have been really cool," Andrew said wistfully, then straightened up with a yelp when Dawn elbowed him.  "I mean...no time loops that I know of.  Sorry."

Buffy sighed heavily and looked at the TV, frowning at the figure she saw there.

"Wait, I thought he wasn't in the race anymore," she said.

Xander shrugged and grabbed the clicker, settling himself on the couch.  "Who, Ted Cruz?  Yeah, he's not anymore.  Apparently he's finally endorsing Trump, which is what made Willow put Operation Hypnos into effect.  Sort of a camel-breaking straw thingy."

Buffy threw up her hands.  "So everyone knew about this spell-casting idiocy except for me?"

"On the other hand, check out Buffy with the political awareness!" Dawn said brightly.  "You sort of recognized him!  You were paying attention!"

Buffy gaped at her, insulted.  "What are you talking about?  I totally pay attention!  It's all very, very important and worthy of attention, and I spend many hours pondering all of the issues of the day."

"Uh huh," Xander said through a full mouth, and where had his bowl of popcorn even come from?  "Issues.  Such as?"

"Issues!  Totally important issues.  You know, about the...thing.  Oh!  And there's a budget thing in there somewhere?"  Apparently the Slayer herself wasn't strong enough to stand firm in the face of blatant skepticism coming from three separate quarters, and she deflated.  "I was dealing with that little apocalypse last month," she said in defense.  "I've been a little busy saving the world."

"Points for world saving granted," Xander said easily.  "Plus, you make me feel better about myself.  I figure you and Willow sort of cancel each other out and wind up with a slightly normal...well, me."

"Thanks," Buffy muttered, settling on the couch next to Xander and eyeing the television curiously.  "I don't think I've really paid attention to him before, but...has anyone else noticed that there's something off about this guy?"

"Who, Cruz?" Dawn asked.  "Yeah, it's totally a thing.  Something about his face gives me the willies."

"Kind of like he's wearing a meat suit and doesn't really know how to work it," Xander said.

"Are we talking a _Men in Black_ situation?" Andrew interjected, reaching over to grab the popcorn.  "Or maybe something out of _The Body Snatchers_?  The original one, of course, not the remake, because..."

"Shut up," Buffy said, leaning forward and staring at the TV.  Now that she was really paying attention, there was something disconcertingly familiar about Ted Cruz.  The hair stood up on the back of her neck, and she found herself furiously wracking her brain to remember when she'd seen something like this before.  Ted the Evil Robot, maybe?  No, that wasn't it.  She had the sense that she was looking at something else - something alive, something that contained multitudes, something that wanted to devour.  Not Richard Wilkins, not that same vibe, but something...something merciless, driven by biological instinct to send itself out into the world, like a hive of swarming insects....

She sat bolt upright, her jaw dropping open, because she knew.  She didn't know how - some Slayer instinct screaming at her - but she _knew._

Xander was looking at her curiously.  "Buffy?  You okay?  Are we going to have to do a politics intervention on you too?"

"Get the weapons," she said.  Andrew whooped in the background, but Dawn grabbed her arm and shook her.

"Buffy, no," she said firmly.  "As tempting as it is, you can't slay political figures.  It would be wrong.  I mean, he may be a monster, but he's not an _actual_ monster."

"And that's where you're wrong," Buffy said serenely.  "At last, I can participate in the political process.  Willow would be so proud.  Make sure you tell her when she wakes up if I'm not back in time."

Dead silence greeted her statement, which was entirely unfair.  After approximately five million and seven averted apocalypses, you'd think she'd get the benefit of the doubt every once in a while.

"Wait," Xander said, "Ted Cruz is an actual demon?  Like, something that needs slaying?"

"I can't believe I didn't see it until now," Buffy said, "but it's totally obvious once you really look."  She went to the weapons chest in the corner and started collecting some knives and her best spare crossbow.  It should be an easy slay, but it never hurt to be prepared.  "Xander, it doesn't look at all familiar?  Think inhuman.  Think sophomore year.  Think...egg-sacs."

Xander's eyes were wide with horror.  "Ms. French," he whispered.  "Oh, man.  You're so right.  I can't believe I didn't recognize it!"

"Well, it's been a while," Buffy said, looking at the television with disgust.  "I don't know what he has planned, but whatever it is he's not doing it on my watch."

"Gross," Dawn said fervently.  "But...I don't know.  He seems kind of pathetic now, don't you think?  And he's famous enough that it would probably be really obvious if something happened to him.  I thought we were trying to keep a low profile after that whole thing in Cleveland?"

"Stupid Hellmouth," Buffy muttered.  "Fine, I'll keep an eye on him for now.  Don't blame me if he snaps and starts eating someone's face, though.  It's not like a giant praying mantis can keep up the human act forever."

She dumped the crossbow back in the chest and settled down to clean her knives and watch.  Soon....

**Author's Note:**

> Needless to say, this is a work of fiction. Ted Cruz is (probably) not a giant praying mantis in human form, and should not be slayed by anyone, supernatural or otherwise.


End file.
